The People's Blog

Month: April 2018

Freedom of speech has rarely been popular anywhere. Only a small minority of any population has been wise enough to see the advantage in allowing their ideological enemies to speak freely and disseminate their views.

Among this minority was one John Milton, best known for Paradise Lost, who delivered his famous Areopagitica to the British Parliament in response to a proposal to require all books to be approved by a censor prior to publication.

Here we find some of the classic and foundational arguments in favor of Read More

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Confucius lived at around the same time as the great Greek philosophers, when thinking and learning were becoming more possible with the rise of cities and non-farming opportunities. Dusted off and misused by modern ChiCom tyrants and incompetent Korean bosses, his philosophy is not quite the ‘rote learn piles of useless rubbish and do as you’re bloody well told, dirty peasant’ line pushed by those who assume their material-obsessed populace will not actually read his work.

The Analects are collected sayings of the old teacher as reported by his students, similar to the Islamic Hadith literature. So let’s have a look.

The Master said, ‘Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.’

Every tiger mum should have this tattooed backwards on her Botoxed forehead. The Asian obsession with ridiculous hours of ‘study’ (memorization and repetition) is hopelessly inefficient. Even though we are far lazier, the west continues to lead in many areas of technological innovation. This must at least partly be a consequence of Asian anti-education, that is, the practice of training children to merely listen, obey and to turn off their brains altogether. Thinking and curiousity are essential.

I disagree. One should study everything. The brilliance of western Enlightenment is our realization that we are able to consider and entertain a concept in our minds without actually being convinced by it. This is something that Medieval Europe and many contemporary, more primitive cultures cannot get their heads around.

Read the Koran. Read Mao’s Little Red Book. Read Mein Kamph. Don’t forget the Nirvana Sutra and maybe some femo dross to round it out. Only a fool need fear that he will become a Muslim, Communist, Nazi, Buddhist or Feminist merely according to whichever of these he had read last.

Mind you, this is a genuine fear for fools. The unintelligent should be discouraged from reading significant texts and their education should focus on practical skills. This group consists of the greater part of the global population.

In high school I knew this dickhead called Jim. He would consistently be swayed by whatever ne’er-do-wells happened to be letting him hang around at the time. Years later I ran into him and he started going on about how he’d become involved in one of those wog separatists movements. I immediately thought, of course! How could he not get recruited into one of those eternally dissatisfied organizations? Though he was not one, I suppose this is where suicide bombers come from. The tenuous point here is, simple people should indeed be kept away from strange doctrines.

The Master said, ‘Yu, shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it; – this is knowledge.’

This is very similar to what Socrates said, although he claimed to know nothing at all. Certainly there is great foolishness in arrogantly believing things we could not possibly know for sure, such as the existence of the Gods, fairy tales about the creation of the universe, or anything much in the realm of morals.

The Master said, ‘They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.’

It is remarkable how few individuals and cultures in history have delighted in truth. Most hate at least some aspects of it and try to keep it hidden, most especially regarding religion, morality and politics. And more recently, race and sex. The average person abhors the truth and gets offended if it is spoken aloud, though the particular truths that will have them brandishing pitchforks vary according to time and place.

Like the Greeks, Confucius sensibly avoids discussion of spiritual matters. You can only do what you can do. I like to fancy that, had he been born in freer times, he would have said exactly what I say, but who knows.

The Master said, ‘What the superior man seeks, is in himself. What the mean man seeks, is in others.’

Want of forbearance in small matters confounds great plans.

How true. The world’s lesser people are unable to endure the difficulty and delayed reward of study, the tediousness of contraception or the frugality to save and invest. In fact, lack of forbearance is probably the primary cause of poverty in the developed world, and in lots of the rest of it, too.

Confucian thought has influenced the West in various ways since his teaching was translated by the Jesuits in the 1600s. The idea of the consent of the governed had an impact on the Enlightenment and the American Revolution, though few Patriots would have known this. The concept of education for all led to mass schooling first in Prussia then in many other places. The idea that the educated should govern led to the Chinese public service exams, a concept now embraced by most parts of the world and excluding a few that have gone backwards for reasons of political correctness. It seems that the people getting the top scores did not adequately resemble those clip art photos for the search term ‘office team’.

Those ‘Confucius say’ jokes were always dull. There was only one that was ever funny. This is it:

Confucius say: “Man who go to bed with itchy bottom wake up with smelly fingers.”

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In about 1999 I had a history tutorial and the frail, homosexual lecturer started pontificating about racism. Said he, “Imagine a white, middle-class, heterosexual man saying that Aborigines are lazy and drunk. Now imagine an Aborigine saying whites are no good because they have no Dreaming [indigenous spiritual awareness] and don’t know their songlines [traditional method of memorizing bush survival skills etc.]. Could we really say that they are equally racist?”

Us young, upright people and a few mature age students considered the question for a moment then Read More

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Book Review of Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, Part I of III.

What should Man do with his life?

Satan whispers in his ear, ‘Whatever you like.’

The Stoics insist, ‘True happiness is found in virtue!’ Jesus moans, ‘There is no path to heaven but through faith in me!’ The utilitarians whine, ‘Make the world a better place!’ The Socialists wheeze, ‘Destroy capitalism and racism and patriarchy!’

But there is Satan, in the back of Man’s mind, still whispering his seductive refrain: ‘Do whatever you want. Why not?’

A hermit named Zarathustra spends many years high in the mountains with only animals as companions. One day he reaches enlightenment and climbs down the hill to inform mankind of what he has discovered.

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I cop some flack here for my nihilistic outlook, which is a tumorous outgrowth of the fact that I have no children and therefore no emotional stake in the future of the world. I understand why this must bother people who do have children, or who intend on having them. My indifference is worse than the cult of Cultural Marxism – at least that’s an ethos.

Arguing about reproduction seems meaningless as it comes down to an argument about feelings. I experience no desire to have children. In fact, I feel a strong desire not to have them. Others want children more than anything else in the world. Why argue about this? Neither your feelings nor mine will change.

A more interesting matter is the origin of my anti-natalist instincts. They are maladaptive and therefore demand some sort of explanation. All my ancestors strove to reproduce, right back to single-celled organisms, and here I am perfectly satisfied to be an evolutionary dead end. Why is this so?

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Books are wonderful travel companions. So many times I have read something that has been perfectly illustrated in my alien surroundings. Also books don’t fart in the tent or want to go shopping.

These days H.L. Menken’s most famous book is probably In Defense of Women. Some of his reflections seem misguided and contrary to red pill wisdom until you consider the context in which he observed the hoochimamas. I currently live in a similar cultural environment so I can perhaps help to explain what he means.

Today in the west, East Asia and some other places we live in a sexual free market where there are no Read More